First off, I thought Benjamin would sometimes contradict himself. He further confused me when he brought fascism and communism into the picture. What he said about them could have been an entirely different essay and didn’t do much to enhance his point of view in my opinion.
As for the actual question of “authorship, originality, and aura” I agree with Charlie and Katie. Although I am a huge advocate of film and photography, I do agree with Benjamin that there is an entirely different experience when viewing an actual painting or even sculpture in person. You cannot fully appreciate Michelangelo’s David unless you see it in person because a picture cannot evoke how huge it is and every curve of his body. Nonetheless, mechanical reproduction, as Charlie pointed out, does produce an aura of its own--although it is very different from the aura one experiences when viewing a painting in person. It does not mean it is a less appreciable aura. They are just different.
I think Andy Warhol depicts this notion extremely well. He takes photographs (already “reproductions”) and famous paintings such as The Mona Lisa and redefines their aura on purpose by reproducing them over and over again through silkscreens. For me, it does nothing to subtract from the original work. It becomes original in itself because it produces a different aura and a different reaction from the viewer. As for film, I disagree with Benjamin in that film makes its critic, the audience, “absent-minded”. There have been so many times that I walk out of a screening of a film in awe either of its cinematography or of its message. But this “shock” element that Benjamin considers as a “distraction” is silly because paintings can be just as shocking.
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